Miami Joe provided a more detailed résumé to explain the predicament. Chink was a protégé of Bumpy Johnson, he explained, starting off as a bodyguard, then muscle at one of Bumpy’s numbers spots. Tradition called for hoods and gangsters to dump bodies in Mount Morris Park; the joke was that Chink had his own reserved spot, like a private parking space. A quick promotion put him in command of one of the plum Lenox Avenue routes. When Bumpy got sent to Alcatraz on drug charges, he entrusted his numbers bank to Chink’s care. Hold on to it until he did his time, make sure he got his cut, his wife got paid every Friday. Don’t give an inch to the Italians or a local up-and-comer. Keep it safe.
Chink was known for his facility with a straight razor. “Got that knife of his to keep people in line,” Freddie said. “His daddy’s that knife sharpener from Barbados.” As if the Barbados part explained something. Carney made the connection—Chink’s father and his sturdy cart were longtime neighborhood characters. The father and the son had made a name for themselves, taking care of elementary needs. t. m. knifesmith, in faded gold paint on wood slats, grinding & sharpening blades saws scissors skates. The old man steered up and down the Harlem streets, ringing his bell—never know which building might send customers onto the sidewalks with their dull steel. Heaving that cart, ringing the bell, and bellowing, “Sharpening! Sharpening!” Carney had used his services for years, everybody did. T.M. honed and buffed your cutlery, humming an unrecognizable hymn, then wrapped it in pages from The Crisis and handed it back solemnly before resuming his route. “Sharpening!”
Carney didn’t see how the elder Montague’s sharpening skills meant that his son knew how to wield a blade—it just meant he knew proper care of his instruments. Carney’s father was crooked, but that didn’t make him so. It simply meant that he knew how things worked in that particular line.
“The hotel pays Chink protection—we knew he’d be coming,” Miami Joe said. “Can’t have niggers sticking up places on his watch. But this is about something else.”
“He got a girl,” Pepper said.
“He got this woman he’s taken up with,” Miami Joe said, “Lucinda Cole. Used to dance at Shiney’s before it got shut down?”
“High-yellow gal, looks like Fredi Washington,” Pepper said.
“Fredi Washington?” Freddie said.
“What I didn’t know,” Miami Joe continued, “is that he’s been trying to get her into pictures. Paying for lessons on how to act, how to talk right, carry herself like so. All that. He’s been putting her up at the Theresa that last six months, paying for it. Movie people coming through town, introducing her around like she’s going to be the black Ava Gardner.”
“Ava Gardner,” Freddie said. Her in those sweaters.
“What we didn’t know,” Arthur said, “is that she kept her jewelry in the Theresa vault. All the stuff he bought her. Miss Lucinda Cole. And he says he’ll skin the niggers who stole it, in the middle of 125th Street. For fucking with his investment.”
Carney sighed, more loudly than he thought.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” Pepper said. “It takes a special kind of nigger to skin a nigger, and that ain’t Chink Montague.” His delivery was such that one believed his expertise in skinning-people matters, and his measure of the mobster’s character. “But he’s got his blood up, and it’s true what they say, he’s handy with a razor. All sorts of folks who’d like that reward money. Or like Chink to owe them one.”
Pepper tailed Montague’s men all day as they pressed the big uptown fences, and the small-timers, and otherwise fringe operators like Carney. He’d been across the street sipping a bottle of cherry cola when Delroy and Yea Big—those were their names—visited Carney’s Furniture. “Walking in like a pair of water buffalo.” They hit Carney’s joint, they called on the Arab, on Lou Parks, and even walked up to the second-floor offices of Saul Stein, self-proclaimed Gem King of Broadway, from the radio. Other members of Chink Montague’s organization visited the known stickup men and heisters.
“Come looking for me, I bet,” Miami Joe said. “Maybe tomorrow if they can find me.”
“They call him Yea Big?” Freddie said.
“On account of his johnson.”
“He has to save face because of the girl,” Pepper said, “and because he took over Bumpy’s business. That’s what we got.”